"Information Extraction from Real-time Applications at Run Time"

Modern systems with their millions of lines of code are beyond deep comprehension of any developer. Often developers use program tracing and profiling to extract information, which helps them to understand the system's behaviour. Often monitors are then also deployed in the final system to check the proper functioning of the system at run time. Code instrumentation is a common method for extracting information from running programs. Current instrumentation methods are inapplicable for real-time applications, because these methods' current theory and practice concentrate on preserving logical correctness only. Real-time applications, however, must also meet timing requirements and thus instrumentation and, more generally, information extraction mechanisms must also preserve such properties. This talk first introduces the general problem of using software-based mechanisms for information extraction, and then discusses two approaches applicable to real-time systems: time-aware instrumentation and time-triggered runtime verification.

Short Bio:

Sebastian Fischmeister is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He received his MASc in Computer Science at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, and his Ph.D. degree at the University of Salzburg, Austria. He was awarded the APART stipend in 2005 and worked as a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, until 2008.

He performs systems research at the intersection of software technology, distributed systems, and formal methods. His preferred application areas are distributed real-time embedded systems in the domain of automotive systems, avionics, and medical devices. He is now working on the theory and application of state-based schedules for adaptive systems and a monitoring/debugging/tracing framework for time-sensitive systems.